“We shall have reason to observe as we proceed, that fish is almost the only means of supporting life, or furnishing the conveniencies of life, such as they are, to the natives that their houses are constructed with the larger bones of fish, and thatched with the refuse that their garments are of fish-skins that their very bread is a fishy substance, pounded and preserved and that even the few cattle they have, feed on fish.”ĭean William Vincent.

(Vincent’s father was a merchant.) He compared the Greek’s anecdotal accounts of their travels with current knowledge in The Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean (1807). Vincent displayed an intriguing mania for researching the particulars of the trading voyages of the ancient Greeks extending into the Indian Ocean. The school has the green centre of Vincent Square for its games. Vincent Square is named after Dean William Vincent (1739-1815), once also the headmaster of the ancient Westminster School which has a discrete frontage in Dean’s Yard. Then Atterbury Street, which contains the new entrance to the Tate, was named for a Dean of Westminster appointed in 1713. (There has been a connection down the centuries between the Abbey and the village of Islip in Oxfordshire, and Dean Buckland died there.) John Islip street runs south towards the Tate Britain.

John Islip (1464–1532) was abbot of the monastery of Westminster shortly before Henry VIII’s dissolution. But I will come to him later.īefore we consider the Victorian deans in the new wave of streets christened after the First World War, we should perhaps note briefly some of the other divines name-checked in the streets of the vicinity. I became interested in the topography of central Westminster named after specific deans having noticed several, and then been surprised to find one of them named for the Victorian Dean Farrar whom I recognised from the historical back catalogue of lecturers at the scientific Royal Institution of Great Britain. Concealed hard by Westminster Abbey there is also Dean’s Yard, named for the deanery there. After Victoria Street ploughed across the cityscape Dean Street, running south outside Westminster Abbey, was subsumed into Great Smith Street. The Abbey is a Royal Peculiar, or church under the direct control of the monarch, and the highest ranking divine of that shrine is the Dean. Not being part of the diocese of the Bishop of London, there is no Bishop to house or commemorate at Westminster Abbey.

London Under London by Richard Trench